In 1672 a large group of pirates managed to escape the infamous fortress in Cartagena by tunnelling under the prison and crawling to safety. This offers the theme for the game Cartagena, which is a light strategy game that can be played in less than one hour.
Each player controls a group of 6 pirates that start the game in prison. The board is made up of 6 interlocking board segments and depicts the tunnel used for the pirates escape. At the end of the tunnel is a boat tile and the first player to see all of their pirates reach the boat is declared the winner.
So how do the pirates move through the tunnel? The tunnel is littered with 6 different icons - daggers, bottles, skulls, keys, pistols and three cornered hats. The game then offers a deck of cards and each of these cards displays one of the 6 icons. On a player's turn they can play a card from their hand. Playing a card allows a player to move any 1 of their pirates to the next matching empty icon on the board. Often this will result in only short moves through the tunnel. However if other pirates (yours or your opponents) already occupy several of these icons throughout the tunnel, it may allow a pirate to make large strides.
A player can play any number of cards on their turn until their hand is empty. The drawback is that cards are not simply re-drawn at the end of a turn. The only way to draw new cards is to send your pirates backwards through the tunnel. A pirate can be sent back until it reaches a space with one or two pirates. If two pirates are encountered then two cards can be drawn. One pirate only earns one card.
This sums up the play of Cartagena in a nutshell. To be successful a player must time their runs to take advantage of the cards they have available and the positions of their own and opponent's pirates. Leap-frogging is the real aim and through clever play it is possible to move a pirate through more than half the tunnel and reach the boat. The real trick to Cartagena is knowing when to take a backward step and gain those extra cards. Allowing some of your pirates to get too far behind the main pack is definitely something to avoid as it will be difficult for them to make medium and long moves.

Cartagena is a nice little filler game that can be played quickly. It is easy to learn in 5 minutes and for this reason should appeal to players who are just discovering the new range of European Board Games on the market. Although the game is simple the designers have also included a 2nd form of play to offer a greater challenge. The game works in much the same way but all players must lay their hand of cards face-up on the table for all players to see. Now players can make their moves having analysed the options open to their opponents. The draw deck is also exposed in a similar fashion (12 cards at a time) and when taking new cards, they must be taken in the exact order that they appear. This does slow the play as players analyse the repercussions of their move but it will appeal to the more strategic players out there.